How To Translate Practice Scores To Tournaments

All right, what's going on guys? In today's video, I'm going to be talking about how to bridge the gap between practice and tournaments. So if your child is playing really amazing in practice and they're struggling in tournaments, this video is for you. If you're new here, all we talk about is helping junior golfers develop to play Division 1 golf, and one of the biggest, most important things about that is being able to score in tournaments. So if you're watching this video, odds are your child might be struggling with that, or at least to some degree. If you're a returning subscriber, welcome back. It's gonna be a good one, it's gonna be a lot of fun. So this is something that comes up all the time when I'm talking to families, whether it's, you know, families interested in working with me or just families that I actually, you know, work with. One of the most common things that comes up, especially from a player where they most— you know, they've been maybe playing tournament golf for like a year, year and a half, where the grace that they give themselves in tournaments kind of, you know, move past certain threshold, right? So it's like you start at golf, you have to put in a lot of work. Like, you just— it's awkward, right? Like grip feels super weird. Rolling your hands over to, you know, hit the ball straight feels super weird. Turning away from the golf ball feels super weird. Being able to hit the ball first before the ground, super weird. All those things are really tough. You gotta put in a lot of effort. Once you've done that, you get to a point where you're actually able to play pretty well, right? So you start off shooting in the hundreds and you get to a point where you're like, I don't know, you know, you get to wherever you get to and you get to the point where you're like, oh, I should play tournaments. And then you get into first tournaments and a lot of times players struggle in their first tournaments, but you kind of have that grace period. You eventually get to the point though, it's like if you continue to improve in practice, and you don't improve in tournaments, you start to be like, what's going on? Like, why am I putting in all this work, and not getting the results? And most time, the players will make the reaction of, well, I'm gonna work even harder. And then that actually makes it worse, because they improve in practice. But then there's an even bigger perceived gap between their practice and tournaments. And they think, I'm just gonna work my way to getting these results. And that's just not how the real world works, right? That's how it works at the beginning. But once we get to a certain point, it's not how it works anymore. Most players get capped out right around 78 to 80 in tournaments as far as a scoring average. And so being able to get beyond that, we have to be a little bit more strategic. But specifically staying on the practice versus tournaments gap here, it is important to understand that we need to evaluate ourselves based off where we're at in tournaments. And we want to solve those problems. And the, the point of practice is practice is a tool to get better results in tournaments. It's not, oh hey, I shoot these scores in practice, therefore I'm going to shoot them in tournaments. Because tournaments, believe it or not, it's a different game. It requires a different set of skills, and it requires a lot more focus. Um, there's— it's a lot less forgiving, right? If you're playing your home golf course, you know where all the bailouts are. You know where all the bailouts are on approach shots. And you can forgive yourself really easily if you hit a bad shot. In tournaments, you have to stick all those things out. You don't know where to bail out off the tee if you don't know how to prep for a golf course. You don't know where to bail out around the greens if you don't know how to run a practice round. You don't even necessarily know that you should be looking for those things. You go ahead and like shoot a good score and you get in the tournament and crap the bed and you're like, what the hell? You know, I shot a great score in the, you know, practice round. It's like, that's how this stuff goes, right? So you need to understand, it's like tournaments are what we're trying to optimize for. We're trying to improve Like we're trying to shoot better scores in tournaments. I don't care if you shoot 66 at home, if you're shooting 80 in a tournament, right? It's just like, sure, for the general golf public, shooting 66 at home is amazing. It's the best day of your life. We're talking about playing competitive Division I golf and trying to do what it takes to get there. It's like, you're going to shoot those numbers. The question is, can we do it in tournaments? Can we do it when it matters? And to see when we do shoot those numbers or whatever we shoot in practice as a tool, as a building block to actually be able to shoot those better tournament scores. Hopefully that makes sense. Now, foundation number 1: we need to be tracking our statistics. We need to be able to look at practice versus tournaments and say, like, how are these different, right? We need to be able to dig into those numbers. I like to look at 5 to 10 rounds of golf in order to make those decisions. I do not like looking at smaller amounts of, you know, data. I don't like looking at one tournament to make a decision. I certainly don't like looking at one round to make a decision. We want to look at a big picture here. A lot of times players get caught up in kind of these little minutiae things, like, well, you know, this little scenario, the wind is off left, and hit a bad shot. It's like No, like, you want to look at macro trends. Um, you want to look at the macro kind of pieces in your game. So anyway, when you're tracking your statistics, you're going to get a bunch of random stuff. Honestly, most of the stuff's kind of useless. What I like to look at are these statistics here. So penalty rate, greens regulation, scrambling, 3-putts, and birdie conversion rate. If we're looking at these numbers and we've modeled them out just using math, um, we get what we should shoot on average, right? Easiest way to understand this: 50% greens, you get up and down 50% of the time, you don't have any 3-putts, don't have any birdies, don't have any penalties, then you should shoot 4.5 over par on average, right? So that's how we really want to be thinking about this. Now we can compare that to what we actually do shoot, because this isn't going to account for chunked chip shots, bladed chip shots, hitting the trees, trying to slice around the tree, hit the tree trunk, make triple. Um, it's not going to account for all those situations. You want to compare it to what you actually do shoot to kind of identify like, hey, where, you know, where's the biggest opportunities here? But long story short, we just want to see like when we're in practice, like where are we at? You know, when we're in tournaments, where are we at? How do these statistics change? Like you might have a situation where you look at your practice and you're like, oh, practice is really good. You know, in this player's case, our first kind of round of this, we're looking at tournaments here. Penalties, pretty similar compared to practice, you know, 6% versus 5%, not really a big difference there. Greens regulation, 43%, 45%, not really a big difference there. Scrambling, a little bit of a difference, 27% versus 37%. That's pretty normal. 11% versus 2%, big difference there. So that's, you know, that's noteworthy. Birdie conversion rate, 14% versus 17%, pretty similar. So the major difference here is we get up and down more at home and we 3-putt a lot less at home. So that results in about the 2, 2.5-shot difference right there. But more importantly than that, we don't have any of these compounded mistakes. And so that tells us right away, it's like, hey, if we want to improve this player's statistics in tournaments, we want to improve 3-putts and we want to improve these compound errors. That's where we've spent a lot of the focus for, for this particular player. And he's been able to improve a lot as a result of that. Um, his most recent statistics in tournaments— penalty rate gone, Major, you know, major improvement there. Greens regulation up pretty substantially. Scrambling up pretty substantially. 3-putts kind of in the same range, but to be fair, he's hitting more greens. And as of late, I'll show you the updated statistics, we made an adjustment to the way that he is doing his, uh, pre-shot routine with his putting that's made a massive difference. And so now I believe he's down to about 8.7% over a relatively, you know, couple of weeks anyway. And we're also looking at, you know, what he's actually shooting. And so we can say, hey, we've improved our compound errors, um, we've just improved across the board. But the first kind of principle here, and this is like the pill to swallow with everyone in this situation, is just like, you need to start measuring yourself based off what you do in tournaments. So if you have a scoring average of 83, guess what? You have a scoring average of 83. And if you shoot 81, you can't be pissed off about that. That's better than your average. You You can't be looking at that and say, oh well, I shot 76 at home, therefore 81 is bad. No, your scoring average is 83. 81 is good. We're moving in the right direction. We want to be focused on moving that tournament scoring average up. If you guys just take one thing away from this video, that's what you need to take away. Um, also want to be clear, if your child's struggling with this, something you want help with, application below, um, fill it out and you'll be able to book a call to talk to me about, you know, your kid's specific situation, see if I'm able to help them. Um, but this is just something that comes by all the time. It's a very straightforward problem to solve. It's obviously emotionally charged, but once you kind of get the right kind of principles in here, we're able to make some pretty substantial progress. But anyway, I want to be able to see where we're at in tournaments, where we're in practice. So let me just go ahead and show tournaments now. So I just showed you practice. Let's look at tournaments. As you guys can see here, we're down to 8.7%, 3 putts. That gives me feedback for moving in the right direction. 61% greens regulation, still massive progress. Pretty conversion rate, kind of staying in the same range. And honestly, I don't care. Scrambling, staying in the same range, it's great. I don't have a problem with that. And so this is really what we want to do, is we want to understand that like, hey, at the end of the day, the point of practice is to shoot better scores in tournaments. And the same thing if we're going to practice on the driving range, the point of that is to shoot better scores on the golf course. I want to make sure all these things are connected, right? If our goal is trying to play Division 1 golf, then we need to be able to say, hey, everything that I'm doing is, as you know, is meant to improve my on, like, my in-tournament performance right here. So it's understanding, hey, tracking my statistics, I know where I'm at, I know what the gaps are. Whatever I shoot in tournaments, that's where I'm actually at. And then what does it make the most sense for me to focus on in order to improve my tournament performance? So sometimes, you know, and a lot of times when players have this issue I want them to play more tournaments. I want them to face that problem more frequently. So we have more reps and attempts at being able to solve a problem versus doing the thing where it's just like, oh, I'm gonna go practice for weeks and then I think I'm getting better and I'm gonna go play in tournament, crap the bed again. Like it doesn't make any sense. It's like, if you're uncomfortable, it's like, guess what? Keep, keep putting yourself in the deep end. You know, it's like, uh, hopefully you guys all can kind of like resonate with this. You know, you got a toddler, right? They're uncomfortable with something. It's just like, you keep putting 'em in the situation until they're comfortable with it. You know, it's like at first they're afraid of other little kids, and then eventually you put them around other kids enough, you know, provided the kids don't like hit them or something like that. It's like all of a sudden they're just like, oh, you know, other kids are fun, right? In the same sense for tournaments, it's just like your child's gonna get to a point where it's just like they're shooting good enough scores at home where they're just like, pisses them off they're not playing well in tournaments. So it's like, who cares if you shot a good score, you know, in, in practice? Like, there's no pressure on it. It's not as fun versus like, we want to do that in tournaments. Okay, cool, let's play in tournaments all the time and be very aware of like, hey, I'm struggling with 3-putts. Now let's identify— it's like, is my lag putting? Is it my shorter putts? Hey, I struggle with compound errors. All right, cool. Why? Like, let's identify those particular issues on the golf course and say like, hey, what do we need to do differently in the future to be able to cut those down? And not to expect that we're going to fix it overnight. Like, it's not just going to click one day. It's going to come over time. And so being able to measure, okay, we started here, we're moving the right direction. We started at 1.49 compound errors, and now we're down to 0.95 compound errors. That's great. And we still got meat on that bone, which is fantastic. So as a byproduct of some of the stuff we've done, because we did make some adjustments to a swing and some strategy and stuff like that, greens regulation has improved, penalty rate has improved, scrambling has improved. And those are all things we've touched, you know. To be fair, I'm not saying, hey, the only thing we worked on is 3-putting, but it's like, guess what, these are still major kind of like opportunities for us. And so the fact that everything else kind of improved in the background while we were worried about these things, fantastic. That happens all the time because it's like a player can kind of go on autopilot and they can take the stuff that they're good at and they become even better at it. And then we can also look at the stuff that we need to improve at and say like, okay, cool, what do we need to do specifically in order to improve this? And so long story short, I want to kind of keep this video more short and sweet for you guys. If your child is struggling in tournaments compared to practice, what What they need to do, number one, they need to be tracking their statistics. Number two, you need to compare tournaments versus practice, see what's the gap, where, where are they at in practice, where does it fall off in tournaments. Then you need to get them under the gun in tournaments with enough opportunities in order to be able to solve that problem, not shy away from those tournaments, actually go into it. Um, side note for mental things, because most people do this thing that I know, there's like Vision 54, and maybe somebody will get in my comments and tell me why I'm wrong about this, and this is fine, like I'm not here to be right, I just want to help junior golfers get better, and this is just what I see consistently. There's stuff out there like Vision 54, just like imagine yourself going out there and birdieing every single hole. And it's like, that's not reality. And guess what? When you go out there and you expect yourself to be able to birdie every single hole and you don't, what's your brain fire off? It's like, oh damn it, I didn't do that. And it's like, what's that do? Triggers, you know, more emotions, right? What does that do? More thoughts, you know, in our brain. I'll do another call on, or like I'll do another video on, on mindset here. But it's just like, if we've got more stuff going through our head, you got more cars on the road, so to speak. You know, you kind of think of your brain as like a highway system and like your thoughts as a bunch of different cars. You get more cars on the road, you can't execute, right? You get on that next tee, you're all frazzled about the last hole. Boom. Now we can't hit a tee shot, right? Versus if we have expectations in line with, hey, this is about what I thought was going to happen, a lot calmer, don't have as many thoughts. Everything's going according to plan. As soon as things don't go according to plan, chaos. But if you know, hey, I've got this kind of characteristic in tournament, this is kind of like what I'm averaging, and that's what I'm doing from these particular situations, it puts you in a spot where it's like, I'll throw out an example here. Let's say you hit the green 40% of the time from 75 to 100 yards, or 175 to 200 yards as an example. You hit 40% of the time. If you have a par 3 that's 180 yards and you actually understand that statistic, you're looking at that and you're like, okay, this is a little bit worse than a coin toss whether or not I hit this green. So it's like, I would like to hit this green, but also if I don't hit this green, as long as I just don't put myself in a completely screwed up position I'm gonna chip it up on, worst case I make bogey. And then when you go out there and you hit the green, like, nice, and you two-putt, you're like, good job, me. Or let's say you missed the green, you chip it up and on, you two-putt, you make bogey, you're like, that was— it was gonna happen a decent percentage of the time anyway, so like, I don't have a problem there. You have more reasonable expectations. Whereas if you're like, oh, I should make birdie, I need to visualize this going like right into the flag, you know, I need to have the perfect shot shape and everything, it's just like It's not how this comes. It's like you hit a shot that's slightly bad and we're all, you know, riled up about that. I gotta make this 25-footer. Oh, I ran that, you know, 6 feet past. Now I gotta make the 6-footer coming back. Oh, I missed that. Now I just made, you know, bogey after hitting the green. Or, you know, like whatever, whatever you want to take for it, right? Um, it's just, it's just so, so crucial to go out there, be grounded in reality and say, okay, what do I need to get better objectively? Because it's like, you know, a lot of times it's like, hey, we need to put our leg putts. Are like, hey, you know, like when we're out of position, we need to chip, you know, get the ball back into position. Is there— there's simple shots. Hey, I need to not hit balls out of bounds. So it's like I need to maybe do a little bit of homework ahead of time, make sure I've got enough room off the tee to hit, you know, whatever club I want to hit. You know, I'm hitting one shot shape, so I can say, okay, I can start it down, you know, the edge of, of my pattern here and know it's going to curve back in the other direction, right? Those are very simple things. Um, doesn't mean they're easy, but They're very simple things. And so when the player can go out there and key in on those simple things, it's gonna be a lot easier for them to see progress. If they can have the combination of accepting where they're at and saying, okay, if I just get a little bit better at this thing, I'm gonna shoot better scores and just focus in on that. That's where results end up coming. So hopefully this makes sense for you guys. Hopefully this is helpful just to kind of see, like, wanna be able to use statistics, identify the differences between practice and tournaments, zero in on those differences, and then deploy strategic adjustments to, to whatever they're doing. In those tournament scenarios, and then put them in enough tournaments so they have the opportunity to be able to actually improve those things. Because, right, a big part of being able to improve is just having the attempts, right? It's like, that's why we hit so many golf balls on the driving range, because more attempts to be able to figure out how to do that. And then also for them to accept, hey, I'm at wherever I'm at, I don't need to be upset about it. It's just like, this is where I'm at, and I want to reset that boundary and say, I just want to get a little bit better and just consistently do that over time. That's how they're actually going to see that progress. So stop worrying about wherever they're at in practice. Look at where are we at in tournaments, how do we improve, and how we use practice as a method or as a tool to be able to improve that tournament performance. So hopefully this video is helpful for you guys. If it is and you want more help, again, application below. Otherwise, if you want to see more videos like this, go ahead and hit the subscribe button, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Talk soon.